Awakening and Feruchemical attributes.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

Okay. So this question is sparked by a rule in the Mistborn Adventure Game. I know it's not cannon but it makes me wonder. What attributes would benefit awakening the most?  

The rule is that the more you tap of a metalmind the higher your outcome is.  Outcome isn't success or fail. But the extent to which you succeed or fail.  

Immediately the one I feel is most obvious is Zinc. If you can use mentalspeed to fill more imagery into your command shouldn't that allow your command to do more?  

Copper would allow you to remember commands that were successful whether you heard them used or used them yourself you would never forget a command and how the outcome worked. 

Duralumin?  Because connection is OP and part of everything?  Maybe?  

Fortune? Perhaps fortune is part of what allows a person to find the right words for a command in the first place?  

 

This isn't to say these are the best metals for an awakener to obtain but curious what feruchemical powers you think are most beneficial for an Awakener. 

[Quantus]

Fortune should help find the right Command, given that WOB says it would help with things like spike placement and soulstamp development and the like.  Mental Speed makes a lot of sense for exactly the reasons you describe. 

Blanking your Identity can make a stash of Breaths that anyone can access, although there's probably a specific Command that would do the same thing without the extra steps.  

I think you could make Tin do a lot in combination with the Heightening abilities but perhaps not with Awakening itself. There's probably a lot of potential synergy between the shapeshifting abilities of Returned (or Royal Locks) and feruchemy as well.  I suspect you can store more F-Gold Health while you have Heightenings, since you get so sick upon loosing them.  

I suspect you could manipulate F-Nicrosil in strange ways to get more Investiture Per Breath out of things, or supercharge individual breaths so they can support larger Awakenings (that would normally take more for the same Command).

I have a longshot hope that F-Cadmium will interact with Breaths, inhaled Stormlight, and other gaseous Investiture, but nothing really supports it beyond theme.  

[Trusk'our]

1 hour ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Okay. So this question is sparked by a rule in the Mistborn Adventure Game. I know it's not cannon but it makes me wonder. What attributes would benefit awakening the most?  

The rule is that the more you tap of a metalmind the higher your outcome is.  Outcome isn't success or fail. But the extent to which you succeed or fail.  

Immediately the one I feel is most obvious is Zinc. If you can use mentalspeed to fill more imagery into your command shouldn't that allow your command to do more?  

Copper would allow you to remember commands that were successful whether you heard them used or used them yourself you would never forget a command and how the outcome worked. 

Duralumin?  Because connection is OP and part of everything?  Maybe?  

Fortune? Perhaps fortune is part of what allows a person to find the right words for a command in the first place?  

 

This isn't to say these are the best metals for an awakener to obtain but curious what feruchemical powers you think are most beneficial for an Awakener. 

I'd say copper may be better than zinc, as zinc is more about thinking things through more quickly, while copper (BoM) has been shown to be able to show imagery quite clearly, which would help with visualization. For example, it might be easier to visualize a highly complicated task by pre-recording it in a Coppermind and Tapping it when giving the Command.

Connection might be able to make learning new Commands easier when Tapped, though that might just be Investiture itself. 

Speaking of Investiture, the most obvious power that links in to Awakening is Nicrosil. Still don't know entirely how it works, but you might be able to at least temporarily get "free" Breaths.

[Duxredux]

Feruchemy by nature changes the Awakener. Any improvements to an Awakened object then most likely comes as a result of any alterations to the Awakener. I came up with three categories.

Methods involving alternation of the Awakening process itself: This would be anything that changes the visualization, identity, or casting time of Awakening. Zinc, Copper, and Duralumin might help for the visualization aspect. Blanking Identity via Aluminum would probably make unkeyed Awakened objects which could be both useful and risky in the right application. Steel allows for accelerated "casting" time. If necessary, a gasper Ferring might be able to talk at a constant stream without pausing to breath when bulk Awakening objects. Rather limited application here but could add an edge to specific scenarios. I wonder if someone sufficiently skilled could use Duralumin to let you tap into the sensory suite that Awakened objects use for objective detection.

Methods that alter the Awakener and improve effectiveness of the Awakened object: Using Awakened clothing that maintains typical Awakened strength when shedding weight would give you far greater mobility than normal while being effectively as strong. Self-adjusting Awakened clothing for Brute ferrings could be useful as well.

Methods that affect Lifeless: Lifeless have a tiered system of security phrases some of which expire after specific usage. Copper allows you to greatly expand this system and remember all phrases of all your Lifeless and possible greatly reduce the chances of someone hijacking your Lifeless.

 

There's some decent application here. Depends on what you're planning on doing as an Awakener.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

1 hour ago, Trusk'our said:

I'd say copper may be better than zinc, as zinc is more about thinking things through more quickly, while copper (BoM) has been shown to be able to show imagery quite clearly, which would help with visualization. For example, it might be easier to visualize a highly complicated task by pre-recording it in a Coppermind and Tapping it when giving the Command.

Connection might be able to make learning new Commands easier when Tapped, though that might just be Investiture itself. 

Speaking of Investiture, the most obvious power that links in to Awakening is Nicrosil. Still don't know entirely how it works, but you might be able to at least temporarily get "free" Breaths.

My personal head cannon on Nicrosil interaction with breaths is that you have the same number of breaths but each one gets supercharged.  You can't go from 2000 breaths to 50,000 breaths but if you tapped enough you could change the worth of each breath to an equivalent higher than that.  

Basically you could gain the benefits of being a higher heightening temporarily but the breath count themselves actually stays the same.  

In action it would look like this.  If you are the 4th heightening and have 1000 breaths, if it takes 1000 breaths to awaken a sword it would still take 1000 breaths to awaken the sword but you could potentially awaken a sword with just 1000 breaths by bumping up your heightening long enough to give that single command.  Of course you lose all passive effects of the 4th heightening while storing and would basically be a drab.  Once you tap it all at once and use that the breaths return to their normal size outside of your body. You would still run yourself to being a drab but that single sword didn't cost you the pains of gathering 20,000 breaths... it just cost you the pains of gathering 1000.  

However, big however here, I don't know how big a nicrosil metalmind would have to be to allow you to store so much investiture.  

Feruchemy works well when talking about storing weight and speed and such. But when working with breaths and investiture... you can store it all at once. And breath is just a lot of innate investiture. Hundreds or even thousands of them is more than what a person can store.  

With weight you store 1 persons worth. With breath you are storing 10s, 100s, or even 1000s worth or persons breaths at once.  So I don't know how much you could feasibly store in a metalmind in the first place. 

[KelsierFortnite]

I imagine that you would be able to store breaths in a nicrosil metalmind. Compounding that nicrosil would be interesting because as per normal compounding, it should give you more than you put into it. However, as Investiture is used to create positive gains in allomancy, you would need to be using Investiture to duplicate Investiture.

I'm not sure if or how this would work. Maybe Preservation's power would be combined with Endowment's? But then, if that's the case, would they still be Breaths? Maybe Breaths stored in a nicrosilmind get automatically converted into raw Investiture when tapped anyway.

If this does work, it could be an easy way to gain a lot of investiture rapidly. The Ghostbloods would definitely be interested in this.

[The Stick77]

43 minutes ago, KelsierFortnite said:

I imagine that you would be able to store breaths in a nicrosil metalmind. Compounding that nicrosil would be interesting because as per normal compounding, it should give you more than you put into it. However, as Investiture is used to create positive gains in allomancy, you would need to be using Investiture to duplicate Investiture.

I'm not sure if or how this would work. Maybe Preservation's power would be combined with Endowment's? But then, if that's the case, would they still be Breaths? Maybe Breaths stored in a nicrosilmind get automatically converted into raw Investiture when tapped anyway.

If this does work, it could be an easy way to gain a lot of investiture rapidly. The Ghostbloods would definitely be interested in this.

Being able to compound investiture like this wouldn’t be exclusive to breath holders on Nalthis correct. Everyone has their own innate investiture so any nicrosil compounder would be able to pull the same trick. The question here is how does the connection work. For example if a Scadrial compounded their investiture in an unsealed/unkeyed nicrosil mind would anyone from a different planet be able to use it or would the investiture itself still have connection to Scadrial. Might be an interesting question because the answer to it basically decides how viable this is as a method of easily transporting investiture offworld.

[alder24]

10 hours ago, The Stick77 said:

The question here is how does the connection work. For example if a Scadrial compounded their investiture in an unsealed/unkeyed nicrosil mind would anyone from a different planet be able to use it or would the investiture itself still have connection to Scadrial. Might be an interesting question because the answer to it basically decides how viable this is as a method of easily transporting investiture offworld.

If the nicrosilmind is unsealed (medallion) then anyone in Cosmere an use it because a medallion gives you also the ability to tap nicrosilminds, if it is just unkeyed then only Feruchemist can use it because it's just a blanked metalminds and you need to be a nicrosil Ferring to tap that. That's all, it doesn't really matter what's inside.

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

22 minutes ago, alder24 said:

If the nicrosilmind is unsealed (medallion) then anyone in Cosmere an use it because a medallion gives you also the ability to tap nicrosilminds, if it is just unkeyed then only Feruchemist can use it because it's just a blanked metalminds and you need to be a nicrosil Ferring to tap that. That's all, it doesn't really matter what's inside.

Medallions are terrifying enough.  Now I have to think of the potential uses of shared breaths through them. The ability to take identity away from breaths is terrifying... not only as a tool or weapon but from a user perspective the idea that anyone could take them... 

I assume to access and make those breaths usable once you retrieve them from the medallion they would be keyed to you again. 

 

[The Stick77]

25 minutes ago, alder24 said:

If the nicrosilmind is unsealed (medallion) then anyone in Cosmere an use it because a medallion gives you also the ability to tap nicrosilminds, if it is just unkeyed then only Feruchemist can use it because it's just a blanked metalminds and you need to be a nicrosil Ferring to tap that. That's all, it doesn't really matter what's inside.

For some reason I was unsure if the investiture itself would still have a connection to the place it was stored in specific. So even an unsealed one that anyone in the cosmere could use the investiture might still have connection to a shard. 

[alder24]

56 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

Medallions are terrifying enough.  Now I have to think of the potential uses of shared breaths through them. The ability to take identity away from breaths is terrifying... not only as a tool or weapon but from a user perspective the idea that anyone could take them... 

I assume to access and make those breaths usable once you retrieve them from the medallion they would be keyed to you again. 

You know it's far easier to share Breaths via "My Breath to yours" than through an unsealed metalmind? Unkeyed Breaths don't have that much use tbf, the core idea of Awakening and Endowment is sharing.

 

57 minutes ago, The Stick77 said:

For some reason I was unsure if the investiture itself would still have a connection to the place it was stored in specific. So even an unsealed one that anyone in the cosmere could use the investiture might still have connection to a shard. 

You're asking if you store something like Stormlight in unkeyed Nicrosilmind, can it be carried out of Roshar? Well Stormlight can't be stored in a Nicrosilmind for all we know, you can only store innate investiture - a part of your soul - and Stormlight isn't that. And Breaths can already be carried out of Nalthis with no problems. They are tied to your identity, but they're still Endowment's investiture.

The unkeyed/unsealed matalminds blanks investiture out of YOUR identity, not Shardic's identity. The example of what you're looking for is the unkeyed Dor, the one used in TLM by Marasi and Moonlight. This is unkeyed but we don't really know what it means, it's still Dor. Presumably it's unkeyed from Shardic/planetary connections, it's a blank investiture. So yes, you can unkey investiture and carry it out of the system this way, but probably not with nicrosilminds, or at least not without some additional steps.

Spoiler

Badger1289

If Investiture can’t be moved beyond a certain point away from its world/solar system, how in the Cosmere did three Awakeners end up on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Investiture from different systems acts in different ways. Certain people have managed, for example, to get some kinds of Investiture to leave their home world through the use of a kind of magical pipeline. Breaths attach to the identity of the individual, and are fully given away--freely, which removes some of this Connection. It's a nature of Endowment that the gift is given without strings attached, so to speak. But while it's a renewable resource, it's a difficult one.

Roshar is extra "sticky" so to speak with Investiture. It's part of the nature of Honor, Cultivation, and oaths. So getting it off is a problem, though collecting it is not.

Echono

Wouldn't consuming it also be a problem? You need a direct or secondary Bond to take in Stormlight Investiture. It's not like metals or Breaths that anyone could absorb. Although a certain grouchy ardent might have found a way...

Brandon Sanderson

You are right in that Stormlight is more being seen as a power source, since certain systems in the cosmere can work on a variety of different kinds. Not just anyone could make use of it, at least not unless it is refined.

Rhythm of War Preview Q&As (Oct. 8, 2020)

 

[The Stick77]

34 minutes ago, alder24 said:

The unkeyed/unsealed matalminds blanks investiture out of YOUR identity, not Shardic's identity. The example of what you're looking for is the unkeyed Dor, the one used in TLM by Marasi and Moonlight. This is unkeyed but we don't really know what it means, it's still Dor. Presumably it's unkeyed from Shardic/planetary connections, it's a blank investiture. So yes, you can unkey investiture and carry it out of the system this way, but probably not with nicrosilminds, or at least not without some additional steps.

That sort of answers my question. I was thinking more in the context of hypothetically if breath (Endowment’s investiture) was stored in a nicrosilmind and a Scadrian (ruin and preservation’s investiture) tried to use it would they even be able to. It could get off world sure but would anyone in the Cosmere be able to use any nicrosilmind like you said earlier. I’m not quite sure how the identity and connection works with that so maybe I’m thinking of it the complete wrong way.

Edited January 12 by The Stick77

[alder24]

3 minutes ago, The Stick77 said:

That sort’ve answers my question. I was thinking more in the context of hypothetically if breath (Endowment’s investiture) was stored in a nicrosilmind and a Scadrian (ruin and preservation’s investiture) tried to use it would they even be able to.

Everyone can use Breaths if Breaths are given to them. Breaths are tied to the identity of people, they are a gift that everyone can receive. And everyone with Breaths can Awaken. You don't need any Nicrosilmind or anything like that to give Breaths to someone from Scadrian. But theoretically speaking, an unkeyed/unsealed Nicrosilmind with Breaths would have those Breaths inside also unkeyed and that would work like when Awakening with blanked Identity, which means that everyone can take them and use them.

Spoiler

Questioner

So we know that you can't just have someone-- If someone were to do something similar to Hoid, he can't just pop and go "Oh look, I can now do Allomancy or I can now do Surgebinding". What about Breath? If someone could somebody get Breath-- Maybe not *audio obscured* Could they still get the benefits of--

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, good question... Yes you can, actually. Breath is-- Once it is given to you, it is being keyed to you. Your Identity. So that transfer makes it yours to use however you want.

Questioner

So you could Awaken?

Brandon Sanderson

You could Awaken. If you-- If you were to somehow make it there, you would be able to Awaken. It's the easiest of magic systems to get the magic from, and then to manipulate. Because it has keyed into it Identity.

Questioner

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you can take Breath onto another world. In fact, you've seen characters do this.

Questioner

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

It would work, yes.

Questioner

*audio obscured*

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, it would work the same way.

The only magic that is location-dependent--  The ones who aren't interested in this, just hum to yourself, okay? *laughter* You don't need to know any of this stuff to enjoy the books, okay? I write them so that you could just-- each series can be read independently, and enjoyed. There is behind the scenes stuff, and if you want to dig, it goes pretty deep.

So on Sel, we have AonDor. AonDor is based on the fact that the Dor, which is an amalgamation of Dominion and Devotion, has been pressed together and stuffed into the Cognitive Realm by Odium who didn't want it to gain sentience, as Investiture will do if it is left alone. It will either seek someone to be its Vessel or it will gain sentience. He pressed it in there; he pressed it together, which creates the violent reaction, because those two intents are opposed. And that is the foundation of the magic. Because it's stuck in the Cognitive Realm rather than the Spiritual Realm (the Spiritual Realm is location-independent; Cognitive Realm is location-dependent), it makes the magic on Sel only work in close proximity to what is keyed through there to the location they're keyed to. This has to do with Identity and Connection. Mostly Connection. So that means you can't do AonDor on another planet, but you can do other magics works anywhere, because they're drawing the magics specifically through either the place, or they're end-neutral, like Breath is, and you don't need any extra power.

Arcanum Unbounded Chicago signing (Dec. 6, 2016)

 

Spoiler

Mojonero

If someone without Identity Awakened an object, would anyone be able to recall the Breath? Would they need to have any breath to recall it, or could it be done by anyone at all?

Brandon Sanderson

If you could blank Identity + Awaken, yes, anyone could get it back.

(Requires intent)

RoW Release Party (Nov. 17, 2020)

 

And if you are concerned if for example a Rosharan can use medallions with Preservation's investiture in them, then yes. This doesn't matter - medallions just grant powers to whomever is wearing them, they already overcome this issue of identity and connection. The opposite is true as well, a Scadrian can use Honorblades or bond a spren, a Rosharan can burn Lerasium and become a Mistborn, thus drawing power from Preservation when burning metals. Hoid is doing just that, collecting different powers from different worlds. Some magics are easier to obtain than others, like Awakening. Others require you to convince a sentient spren to bond you - that's Radiants. And to get some you need to have the right genetics - Allomancy/Feruchemy and Selish magics - but you still can get those from other sources like Lerasium. If you try hard enough you can get those powers and it won't matter that you're not native or that your soul's investiture is bound to a different Shard. A Radiant who is also an Allomancer can fuel Allomancy with Stormlight for example but that might require additional steps. But on the other hand Breaths can easily fuel basically anything, from Allomancy to Surgebinding. 

Spoiler

Snoxcatko

Can people from another world like Scadrial or Sel become a Knight Radiant.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Snoxcatko

Is there some like special conditions in world?

Brandon Sanderson

Nope. You just have to be chosen by the spren. So because the spren are involved then the requirements are a little different for Roshar. But to became an Awakener, you just need to get the Breath so you could pick it up on Nalthis also pretty easily.

Prague Signing (Oct. 26, 2019)

 

Spoiler

Stormlightning

If Hoid was to get his hands on "bavadinium," could he alloy it with lerasium and get Sand Mastery?

Brandon Sanderson

This is theoretically possible.

FanX 2018 (Sept. 6, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Yoitsthew

Would a lerasium/atium alloy create a Feruchemist, rather than an atium misting?? What with the way that it’s an alloy of god metals, and the way that lerasium can be used to acquire other magics? As far as I know there is no lerasium left currently, so this one is also just for my curiosity!!

Brandon Sanderson

You can use the god metals from Scadrial to make a Feruchemist, but I have to RAFO the actual means.

General Reddit 2020 (Sept. 30, 2020)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Is Investiture universal? By that I mean, if an Allomancer got Stormlight somehow could they use that to fuel Allomancy?

Brandon Sanderson

That is always possible, so yes.  But in some case it requires some quote-unquote hacking, like an AC vs a DC current or we've got a 120 Volt and they've got 240. Does that make sense? It might require-- I guess hacking is the wrong term, adapters.

Firefight Seattle Public Library signing (Jan. 7, 2015)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

The people on Scadrial have innate Investiture from Preservation. If someone from another planet, say Roshar, were to get Allomancy, from Hemalurgy or Feruchemy, would that person have to have Stormlight as well as the metal in order to do their--

Brandon Sanderson

No, good question. They would just need the metal if you were Hemalurgically getting the ability. Remember, Hemalurgy is basically ripping off a piece of someone else's soul and stapling it to yours. Short circuiting the soul, so to speak... All the pieces of the soul you would need, it is giving you. It has dangerous ramifications, but you wouldn't need Stormlight also.

Skyward Seattle signing (Nov. 10, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

You've mentioned in the last couple of afterwords that you get interesting results when you mix types of Investiture.

Brandon Sanderson

Yes.

Questioner

Twinborn and Surgebinders on Roshar. Can you mix a form of magic with a source of Investiture? Can say Vasher use Stormlight in place of Breaths or would that require tampering via Hemalurgy or something like that?

Brandon Sanderson

Most of them require tampering. Some of them are a little bit easier than others. It depends on really what you mean. For instance, white sand can be charged in the presence of any Investiture right? It's just-- But that's not really using the magic, it's just charging it with other Investiture. But, you know, it would be very easy, for instance, if you can get yourself Invested-- Like, for instance, it'd be very easy to use Breaths to fuel Windrunning right? Because the oath and the bond and things like that are going to make it pretty easy. However fueling Allomancy with something else is going to be a lot harder. So it really depends on the magic. It's the sort of thing that there will be lots of science in the books dedicated to making happen in the future and you will find some of the processes these work easier than other ones.

DragonCon 2016 (Sept. 3, 2016)

 

[The Stick77]

37 minutes ago, alder24 said:

And if you are concerned if for example a Rosharan can use medallions with Preservation's investiture in them, then yes. This doesn't matter - medallions just grant powers to whomever is wearing them, they already overcome this issue of identity and connection

That makes sense thank you I just misunderstood those connection mechanics. Thanks for explaining.